Temp Keller

John Templeton (Temp) Keller is the Co-founder and CEO of Templeton Learning and Co-founder and President of Templeton Academy. Temp also serves on the boards of the Loomis Chaffee School, Austin Achieve Public Schools and the African Leadership Academy. He received his B.A. from Princeton University and his M.B.A. from The University of Chicago.

As I often joke with friends, it always feels like a decisive moment in education. And alas, education tends to evolve at a glacial pace.

Here are some much posed questions in education these days: what does it mean for a student to be successful? what does it mean for any person to be successful? who really is most likely to succeed? Do students need skills or credentialing in order to thrive long-term?

This was the thought coursing through my brain in the wake of my oldest child’s 8th birthday recently.

It seems just like yesterday that Kerry and I moved to Austin— when Kendall, our oldest, was all of a year old. I remember how people would look at me quizzically when I told them that I was an education entrepreneur. Once I explained that I was one of many attempting to rethink what schooling could/should look like to prepare K-12 learners for a 2030 where 85% of the jobs haven’t been invented yet, nine times out of 10 I’d get the following...

Per my last post, in recent weeks, I've been thinking back on the founding of Templeton Academy and looking seriously at how our educational model responds to the big questions about education that drive conversation today.

At the most basic level, we all know that parents are interested in seeing their children be safe and succeed. Students, when you actually ask them, more often than not want to have fun with friends and feel successful.

Interesting things can come from the unscheduled hours of a flight delay. A bout of bad weather during a layover between Austin and Washington D.C. gave me the gift of several free hours to catch up on long-neglected articles and podcasts. Before I knew it, I was musing about the original founding of the Templeton Academy model and about the questions I asked then and still ask myself about how education ought to work in order to best serve kids.

Here’s an exploration of some of the questions that I have been asking and answering as the Templeton Academy team pioneers a...